2022-05-19: Contact
- Log: 2022-05-19: Contact
- Cast: Sayla Mass, Akane Shinjo
- Where: Tsutsujidai - Nouveau Rochelle
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-05-19
- Summary: Sayla follows up with Akane after the incident with Anti. Akane picks the restaurant, but things get messy anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Nouveau Rochelle is a nice French-Japanese fusion restaurant in the Tsutsujidai CBD, as much as there is one. It's upmarket, but not devastatingly so. And Sayla Mass arrived twenty five early minutes to prepare. She ensured her not only was her selected booth hard to spy on, she had booked out the two either side. It was important this was private. Still, she has a white noise device if needed, on the underside of the table. She's researched as much as she could.
This was not going to be an easy conversation
>Booking for two under Mass. I'll see you shortly. -Sayla
When Akane arrives, she'll be guided to the table. Just in time for the drinks to be brought out. For Sayla, a pot of plunger coffee, with a small cup, with milk and sugar on the side. She uses neither. For Akane, a tall glass of tomato juice, blended with frozen watermelon. A perfect drink for the summer heat. And for the astute- there is already a credit card beind the counter.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
This is maybe the very most Akane has dreaded a conversation. She's thought about cancelling on Sayla twice, but she's well aware of what happens at that point -- Sayla will just keep pursuing her, and while Akane can withdraw further and further and further from her... part of her thinks she can still salvage this.
... she isn't sure *how*, mind you. But if Alexis says this type of thing is normal, maybe she can get Sayla to see that, too... or at the very least, get Sayla to give up on her.
She'd kind of like to go back to school.
Akane is five minutes early herself, taking a seat exactly where she's guided. This is a pretty nice place, she thinks to herself -- good thing she put it back together after Renais blew it to bits. Much nicer than an empty lot and an excuse about controlled demolition to throw something else up.
"So!" Akane says, bright and cheery. "Why spring for all this stuff? You're not going to soften the blow or anything."
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Sayla's countenance doesn't change, despite Akane's breezy arrival. "Thank you for coming." Her tone is carefully measured- not angry, but not happy either. If this becomes frivolous she might try and weasel out. If it becomes too aggressive, she'll close off and not walk away. This is a tightrope, but the fact she came means there's some hope.
"To ensure I have your time and attention," Sayla responds, deciding to let her see the staging. "I noticed you get uncomfortable when people do things for you, so you can consider this one transactional." It's why she already ordered a drink for the girl.
Sayla takes a deep breath. There's nothing for it but to do it. Building up tension isn't helpful here. "...Akane, is anger something you find hard to deal with?" It's a comparitively gentle start, but this means she might get a helpful foothold.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
There's a flinch when Sayla just lays it out like it is. "Oh! So you're just buying my time with juice, huh," Akane says, recovering fairly smoothly. She takes a sip. ... Yeah, she doesn't mind this, she decides, even if it does catch her a little off guard to have her style spelled out so clearly; in the end, Sayla's sort of fallen into her trap, a bit.
... Or is she falling into...?
... It's fine. "Hm? No, not at all," comes Akane's answer. She takes a sip of her juice, biting her straw a little too hard; she's got those wide eyes looking right up at Sayla. She's trying to stay guarded, cautious -- face folded over face, obscuring, stagnating.
"I deal with it just fine when someone isn't creeping on me from my friends' houses," she eventually offers. "Then again, you probably already told her the whole thing, so I guess it's less 'friend' and more 'neighbor'!" Her voice tells that enthused, chipper story it always tells.
Her straw already looks like it's been put through a gearworks, though.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
It's a pity she can't hide the roar.
"Actually, I haven't told anyone. Nor do I plan to. This incident is between you, me and your brother." Sayla does all she can to quietly maintain eye contact, as Akane tries to avoid it. "And I'm not intending to blackmail you or hold this over you."
Sayla's posture shifts backward slightly, a subtle invitation for Akane to take up space in the conversation. She's acerbic, she's frustrated, she's putting her shields up, she's worried. It confirms a lot.
"This wasn't the first time, was it?" Her tone is a little gentler. Not so much to betray the tone. "Do things boil over with Anti a lot?" Sometimes, the best way to respond to a bald faced lie is to charge headlong through it. Sayla's hoping this is one of those times. And then, as calmly as anything, she drops a phrase that could derail Akane's train of though entirely.
"It's a lot, being responsible for a Kaiju like him. They can struggle to adapt to how humans do things."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
That gets a genuine startle from Akane, that first admission. "... What?" She looks kind of mystified. "If you don't tell her, and something bad happens to her, you're kinda responsible at that point, right?" comes her immediate counterpoint. After all -- if it's not behind closed doors... why wouldn't you tell everyone? Get people to round on her, reject her for their safety? After all...
'Always such a violent girl!'
Akane feels her foot tilt up a bit, her knees tilt just a little bit inward, at the memory.
"But whatever. If you wanna make bad decisions, I can't really stop you!" Another long sip. ... It's actually kind of hard to sip through a straw this mutilated; Akane has to tilt it a little with her tongue and bite it *another* way to pop it back open a bit. Then, and only then, does she actually get that long sip, and that time to think she wanted.
It only makes her response worse. "Nope! This happens a lot, actually. At least once a month," comes the answer to Sayla's question. She's opening her mouth to speak again, when --
-- "What?" The straw rolls off her lower lip, her mouth hanging open for a few seconds. "How would you know? Did the White Base have some secret kaiju force in your world?"
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Akane doesn't even have seemed to consider that Sayla would bring this up with anyone but Rikka. Or she's not as worried about everyone else. But those feelings... isolation? Abandonment? Is this what Akane expects? She breaks eye contact momentarily, before responding. "...I would be responsible for not giving her warning. For not allowing her to prepare. But if I told her or not, I would still hold no responsibility for someone to try harming her." This might be hard to swallow. "That would fall entirely on whoever harmed Rikka. It would be their decision to hurt her. It would be their action. My decision here doesn't absolve them." She's doesn't address Akane. That slight step sideways might mean she can take it.
Once a month, huh. That's not good. She'll circle around. Instead she turns to the question that tripped Akane up. "Nothing like that. One of the children my organization supports is a Kaiju like your brother, and she came into my personal care for a while." Technically truthful. "She can pass for human easily enough, but she isn't. She thinks differently, she processes differently, she doesn't draw the same inferences humans do. And she doesn't have the life experience you'd expect from how she presents." She's not sure how long Anti has been with Akane. But long enough for this to arise.
That moment of understanding is used to lead into a strike. "So are you really that cheerful about telling me these incidents happen so regularly?" Her eyes track noticeably to the straw in the drink. She's giving Akane another chance to step forward, rather than fall back and force Sayla to pursue.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
It... does make it easier, a bit, that Sayla steps a little sideways. If Sayla doesn't warn Rikka about something that's not going to happen -- at least, not in this context; Synchrotank and Phormocannon render complete cleanliness here a little bit off the table -- then... there's no harm, and by extension, no responsibility.
It takes Akane a while to walk herself through that. Having to lowers her guard a bit for the next part. So Sayla... takes care of a kaiju. Like Anti. ... a lot like Anti, it sounds like. Another autointelligence kaiju? A child-kaiju, with different life experience from how she presents, and thinks differently... "... Huh. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were talking about that weird little kaiju girl from when we saved Renais. Did you know she asked me on a date and then mostly wanted to say rude stuff about Alexis bailing out my crappy plan?"
Sip. Akane wonders if giving that away is too much, but... well, it's fine. Referring to Alexis yobisute is maybe a little much, but... whatever, they're talking about something else, anyway.
... something a little difficult. "Well, I mean: it's out there! I don't think there's any reason to act like it isn't." Tilting her head a bit as she takes another sip, Akane asks, "It's like we were talking about in class once... once a crime's out there, all you can really do with it is admit to it and make it big, right?" That's not *quite* how the saying goes, but -- well, she is the ace of her class.
"Besides. This isn't even your world. Once whatever weird stuff is happening here closes up, it's not really your business." Akane leans forward, still offering that false mask. "I'd think you'd be more focused on kaiju *attacks* than whatever sad daytime J-drama I've got going on."
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Akane's a long way from stupid. There's no point lying to her face when she's put it together. "...I am." She says, after a moment. She's quiet for a moment. Does she press forward or... She takes a sip from her coffee.
"I see." Sayla had her own reservations about Alexis, and Akane heard them. "So, do you trust Alexis Kerib?" She's being calm, casual, easy. She'd had this planned out, but...
The fact is, Sayla feels uneasy. Like she's already messed up. Like she's missing a vital piece, a connection she should have drawn. She just has to press forward.
"...Or you can stop." She says. "Change. Find another channel for that anger than this." There's pause, as she puts the statement together. "...Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity?" Sayla is the sort of person who would know ancient Roman sayings. She takes some time to consider it. Let's... lean on that a bit. "But I'm not telling anyone. You're not. And for better or worse all Anti seemed to care about was you. So if it's not exposed, there's no reason to 'make it big'." This is a bad train, and Sayla hates herself for doing it. "...I don't care about judging people, or punishing right now. I care about what it takes for this to stop, and then improving the situation, however that looks. Does that make sense?"
She takes another sip of the coffee. She needs time to think. Consider this. She's so aggressively leaning in. But she's leaning in. "Maybe I should be. But Kaiju are a natural phenomena, a part of the world, and aggressiveness has risen, after all. But that's not my specialty. I can count on others for that." She sighs. There's still the matter of heart vs nature, but...
"Just because it isn't my world, that doesn't mean I shouldn't care about Tsutsujidai, or the people in it. Even once it's all closed off." After all, she never stopped caring about someone who had closed himself off from her. As much as she wished she had.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Sayla throws hard question -- difficult statement -- after hard question, after difficult statement. To say Akane looks uneasy is an understatement; maybe she's picking up Sayla's residual unease, too. It's hard to say what she is or isn't getting at this point; as sensitive a soul as she is, right now she might be drowning everyone else -- and even herself -- out, at least in her own head.
"... Alexis worked very hard to fix my plans," Akane answers, rather than a simple yes or no. The evasion itself probably gives a lot away. Plans, plural, probably doesn't help the situation, but again: it's out there now, so she might as well go with it.
"... Okay, *that* much I'm gonna believe," Akane offers, on the topic of judgment and punishment. It's... frustrating, for her, but not for the reason she expects. She thinks back to middle school. It's a lot easier to remember the times she got in trouble than anything else. "... Kaworu tried to get me to teach Anti, instead of just shout at him, too. I even kinda tried it once. I guess I can't make it stick!" She still holds onto the mask, for now -- but it's slipping. It's obvious that it's slipping, especially on that last sentence -- the cheery, 'ha ha that sucks oh well!' tone sounds singularly hollow.
"That last part sounds like a bunch of junk, though," Akane eventually adds. "You care ~so much~ about the people in it that you were gonna give up on Renais, right?" Did they forget to close comms when Sayla demanded the controls...? Or did Akane just feel Sayla's heart sink when hers did? "Rikka's a really nice girl. I wonder if she could've stayed that way if you took her dumb little off brand Guntank and killed someone with it~."
Akane sips at her drink. Sayla wants her to find another channel for her anger? Sure. She can do that.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Plans, huh. "I see." She doesn't say anything here. It's data. But she pauses. "What about your guardian? Do they help with Anti? Or are you responsible for everything with him?" It's clicking. Her theory stands.
And then things get increasingly messy. The roar is more a scream, loud and in her head and painful. She winces, and sips her coffee. Even as Akane gets the knives out. And drives it into her heart. Sayla hardens, despite herself. She won't rise. She's better than this.
"...I'm not like Guy." She says, flatly. "You're right. Alexis Kerib's interference changed the outcome that day." She says. "But if we didn't interrupt that Heaven or Hell, Renais AND Guy would have died that day, as well as the rest of us. I've *seen* what it did to him, and Renais' Mazin was not equipped to handle it, nor was she." This isn't 'Sayla, the woman who runs a charity'. This is 'Sayla, the woman who got to the other side of the One Year War. "Geed was defeated, that... Betterman was crumbling. Mr. Nagisa was in no position to act. I was making the call as best as I could." A dark look passes her face. "And no. She couldn't. I know that. But it would have been worse if I had ordered her to take the shot instead."
Sayla's own mask is struggling. What is she even saying here. She presses her hands together. She has to change the angle. Or. "And then I would have borne the outcome either way. I would have done all I could to mitigate it. To help her recover, or help those who could." Orient the way Akane does. "It wouldn't make up for what I did. The only one who could choose the way she felt about me was her. And maybe I could never make right. I stand by my decision, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't try to improvethe consequences."
Finally, she takes another sip. "Now, I'm going to ask a question." She rights herself. "Do you think that I buy that you really enjoy this?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane takes a moment to consider her answers carefully. "Anti's *my* responsibility," she says, firmly. She doesn't know how much she's giving away, here, as she continues, "I'm the one who wanted him in the first place. Besides, my guardian works so hard for me... he always cleans it up when I screw up."
Akane listens to Sayla's assessment. ... It's not what she expected, and the *way* in which it's not what she expected hurts. 'It would've been worse on her, so I did it.' "So, at least you *do* get it," she says -- and that's all she says out loud. But the fact that Sayla is willing to do the slow, boring, hard work of putting things back together afterward... that's something Akane could never manage.
That's why she needs a world whose ungentleness vanishes with the sun.
The question comes. Akane doesn't flinch; indeed, quite the opposite -- those big, round eyes blink cluelessly. "You sound like that out-of-towner who came in and acted like she knew what was going on with me," she offers. Pulling her phone out, she absently begins tapping at it. "Hm. What was her name? Mesta...? Eh, it's not important."
Mesta Mesua -- *there's* a name for Akane to be dropping at a time like this, at that.
Akane stops cold. "Anyway -- I enjoy a lot of things," she offers, with a small smirk. She's cornered, and she *does*, in her heart of hearts, like Sayla... There's a faint thud as Akane squirms her foot out of one of her shoes, under the table.
Akane sips at her drink, head tilted down but eyes still meeting Sayla's. A stocking-clad foot slides against the shins of the Doctor's pants -- toes pushing against her knee, tilting down, then --
... This time, it's Akane who flinches first. Gross, she reflects. This woman is like my mom's age. Ew. At least no one'd think it was weird if it was Hibiki.
"... I'll pretend that didn't happen if you do!" Akane half-offers, half-pleads.
That's a 'no' on really enjoying it, if one that took... several alarming steps.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
"...Maybe that's why teaching him didn't stick." Sayla says, as things unfold. "You talk about him like he's a pet. Not a person." That's more aggressive. The Guardian is a he. Another note. Another point. "...Then he's doing you a disservice. It means you can't learn from your mistakes." Her voice is still... flatter than it was.
Sayla's expression doesn't change. She's become more and more impassive. "I don't know what's going on with you. But you're making it clearer." Nanai. Nanai was here. But Nanai barely leaves Sweetwater, so how? Did she get here through the warmer world? What does that even MEAN? No. She'll have to talk to Nanai later.
And Akane starts to move her foot, and Sayla sees the look on her eyes and feels the foot on her knee and even if she doesn't flinch she *does* slide away. Sayla's expression changes rapidly, from stonelike to a mix of upset and concerned. Her voice softens for the first time in a while. "Akane. Don't." She shakes her head. "I don't want you to do this. And I don't think you do either."
What is it, if she goes to this. In this place. In this place with almost no crime, just Kaiju. Akane pulls away from her and Sayla takes a sip of her coffee. "...I can't do that. What I said at the start of this conversation stands. But this isn't..." She 's in *high school* in the nicest place arguably in the Earth Sphere. She has to go from subtle to shouting, here.
"Akane." She's firming her voice again. This is going to come to the front. "There are situations where I've seen people handle things the way you have, with your brother." She's normally softer. But Akane might need to see the fully bloody carcass. "And they way you have today. There's one scenario I'd call it close to 'normal'." She takes a breath.
"And that's when someone who is being abused is trying to gain whatever control they can. Repeating the behaviour they've seen, they've experienced. They've had inflicted upon them."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
... A pet? That's -- Akane finds herself ramming into two separate lines of thought at once. (He's not even that, he's a kaiju.) (He's practically family. You were terrified at the idea of him getting swallowed up by that -- thing, with the DG Cells.) They try to come screeching to a halt. They fail. They crash.
"Kaiju aren't -- supposed to resemble people! They just -- act! They don't get --" Akane snags on the contradiction. If they can't consider the world -- if they can't get better -- wasn't Anti doomed from the start? A kaiju that learns, that thinks, that changes -- that's --
"Anyway, if things get as bad as they did then I *can't* learn from my mistakes, at least not in a way that matters," comes a sullen, muttered response. She does seem to be learning from the one she just made, though; there's a faint metallic thud as Akane pushes her toe against the center pillar of their table, sliding her foot back into her shoe.
'Why, I've seen more creator-creation pairs come to blows than not in my time! People who don't understand that simply have a somewhat -- naive, view of the way of things.'
If Sayla thinks this is shouting, wait until she gets a load of Akane!
Framing this as a transaction goes a long way, because it means Akane remains seated for what she's about to say. "I'm not a victim here!" she shouts at Sayla; it's loud enough, here, that a few diners -- even in Tsutsujidai, where people keep to themselves -- look Akane and Sayla's way. "Don't act like you know what's happening here!" Her fingers dig into the table. She feels like she could tear a chunk out of it. She certainly *wants* to. "I don't need *help!*"
... no waitstaff come to break up the argument, at least. Small mercies. Akane would be far too embarrassed by that level of care.
"I *am* in control here," Akane says, starting to level back off. "And you're naive." She downs the rest of her drink all at once; slurping up that much frozen watermelon is enough to make her head hurt. Her right eye scrunches up.
"And -- he's *not* my brother. He's just a kaiju. I just didn't want you to think things were that screwed up, but *apparently* he also doesn't know how to go with an obvious lie yet, either." Akane is the artist here, after all! The creator!
Alexis says so.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
"...They do more than act." Sayla says flatly. "Nidaime and her father are proof of that. Just because they don't think like humans doesn't mean they don't think. They're not like Dr Hell's machine beasts or the zonder, just tools for killing. They have as much agency as any other." At least, from what she's learned. Which is not enough. Still... "A Guardian should step in to protect you when necessary. But not protect you from everything. They're supposed to teach you too." A sudden, old memory. And another. "Otherwise, they haven't prepared you for when they're gone. That's failing you."
Sayla lets Akane shout. Thius... This explains alot. And Sayla knows she's hit the mark. She's so desperately in the lie maybe she believes it. The picture is becoming ever clearer. And Sayla doesn't like it.
"Well then which is it? Is he just a kaiju who just acts? Or should he be able to understand a lie? Are you sure?" She presses further. "If he's just a Kaiju, why did you want him?" She wanted to be gentler. She wanted to be kinder. More careful. More delicate. But Akane wants to push, and she needs to be pushed back. Challenged. So she can start challenging herself.
"Even if you don't need help," something Sayla doubts, "you want it. Or is there another reason you reached out to Guy? And to Kaworu? And to me?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Kaworu had said *Alexis* had said Akane needs Alexis less every day. That... was something Akane had felt *had* to be Alexis kidding around with an old friend, at the time. She feels that way even more now, because she's definitely not ready.
... but it doesn't matter. Alexis won't leave her. As far as she knows, he'll outlive her. That's fine.
"To figure out something I couldn't," Akane answers Sayla, honest-enough but unable or unwilling to expound. She stands up; she's finished her drink, after all. Sayla wants this to be a transaction? Fine. Drink finished. Discussion over.
... Akane does owe Sayla one last answer, though, as she stands. "I didn't 'reach out' to anyone. I just jerked you around until you did something I couldn't!" She takes a steadying breath, and says, "Thanks for the drink! Maybe next time will be better. ... don't worry about Anti. I'm... gonna try not to throw anything else at him."
There's some sincerity in that, at least. There's part of Akane -- even if she's angry -- that feels the crushing weight of expectation here.
"Say hi to Guy and Alouette for me!" she requests, before she starts toward the exit.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
"Good. I'll be back to check up on that." She also... seems to entertain the thought of a next time. It's something. "Sure. But I imagine he'll be coming back to check on you himself soon." Sayla thinks about letting her go with that. But decides she can't.
"...Requiring someone to do something you couldn't. There's a quicker way of saying that." It's a low blow. But right now it seems Akane is going to think about what she said. So she needs to say it. "See you later, Akane."
She feels like Goodbye would read wrong here.